Rolling Teenpop 2007 Thread

Two thumbs up for that "Girlfriend" remix. Is Lil Mama going to re-work every big hit of '07? ;)

Daughtry ft. Lil Mama - "Home"

Green Day f. Lil Mama "Working Class Hero (Umbuberella Mix)"

They hurt you at home and hit you at school
I'll hit you with lipstick, you'll be my poo-poo
Till you're so fuckin' crazy you'll swallow foo-foo
A working class hero is something to be
A lip smacking hero is better, it's me

Greg, Jordin sings it the way one does sing it, she gives it warmth, and the harmony arrangements give it unexpected prettiness, but I dislike the song so much that the dislike carries over to that style of emotional expression. In any event, Jordin's personality gets canceled out. I mean, if you heard it on the radio, would you know or care who it was? Whereas the same basic emotional style on "I Who Have Nothing" is absolutely right. (I wouldn't be surprised if that performance in March of "I Who Have Nothing" won the competition for her; haven't yet listened to Tuesday's performance, though I'm about to.) That said, "This Is My Now" isn't awful to listen to by any means. It's just shrugworthy.

Whisperin' Edd Hurt over on the rolling country thread:

so this guy I know here had hiccups, for a day, and it was getting worse, nothing helped, and they tried everything: scare tactics, ice cube on the neck below the ear (that almost always works). what eventually cured them was the ultimate scare tactic: a montage of Amy Winehouse close-up photographs, some with fangs drawn on them, others just as they are/she is. scared the hiccups right out the guy, for real, the curative picture is up on the wall at Grimey's Records in Nashville, so if you have hiccups that won't go away or just need a jolt in general, check it out. I'm still trying to figure out the appeal of Winehouse myself.

The reason Amy Winehouse is a good cure for hiccups is that she's so dripping with soul, drenched in Motown, soaked in various alcohols, and swimming in praise that she's basically just a glass of water with a Ronnie Spector wig. (Neo-traditional Cure for Hiccups, w/ gloss, but not poppin'.)

Actually she gets through some personality in "Question Existing"

yeah 'question existing' sticks out on one listen as being particularly weird and interesting.

i might be talking to aly & aj in a couple of days! on the phone!

in fact i might stop listening to the rihanna album and just listen to 'the potential breakup song' again instead.

(the album is apparently not out until oct in either US or UK - they're releasing into the rush here in a week or two but not doing much promo, saving the big push for later. i mentioned 'the potential breakup song' and the PR was all like BUT NO ONE'S SUPPOSED TO EVEN KNOW ABOUT THAT YET)

Haha, we're like the outside world bringing Lord of the Flies to a crashing halt (but actually serving as a telling parallel of how these themes play out in the adult world as well).

OMG, Lex, you need to send around a mass email to a few folks 'round here for questions. Ask them about Amber Watches(R) and "pervs" and monkeys (on second thought, um, no). (My suspicion is that "gay male" falls under their umbuberella of "pervs"; not sure how one would ask that tactfully.) Also ask 'em how they write songs so good.

this is my (potential) mass email!

ie i am asking you to email me ideas innit, alex dot macpherson at gmail dot com GO.

yeah cos i don't get any of those references basically - will listen to into the rush this weekend.

"Girlfriend" remix is great! AHHHHH!!!! When's the album coming out?

And I just found out that two of my friends spent more than a week in a cabin with Jordin Sparks at some summer camp a year ago. CRAZY.

the GF rmx is SOO AWESOME - i suppose in one sense it's less interesting, but i'll gladly take a great pop tune/potential killer club track over a curio (though i wouldn't nec. call the original a trainwreck - and i love that too.) Lil Mama is just so much more a enjoyable AND credible as a braggadocious brat. and i don't miss the verses at all.

most of all the remix makes it clear that GF is actually a hip-hop track - Av's just not a very good rapper. so i guess it's not the 1st rock #1 since '01 anymore?

--rosso'love

(I was the one who called the orig. a trainwreck...hyperbole, I guess.)

Has there been any discussion of kerenann.com yet? Ms. Keren Ann is apparently an Israeli chanteuse. OR something like that. What do you guys think? It's a bit too wistful (?) maybe to be teenpop, but she's young and maybe in Israel she's teenpopish. I know - having peripherally followed Israel music - that there's not much in the way of traditional teenpop music. Anyway, I'll ask some friends, but I'm curious what your immediate takes are. Esp yours, Frank. Is this music Jewish in any way?

I have tried several times to like Keren Ann, but ... too wistful is putting it mildly. She does have Israeli family connections, yes, but has lived all over the place. I think her first couple of albums were recorded in French - she was based in France in the early 00s, and was fairly successful there actually. (I was living in Belgium at the same time, and so got exposed to quite a bit of her music.) Then she went off to New York, I think. She comes across really interestingly in interviews, but her music bores me TBH.

However, I know there are quite a few fans on ILM of her English language records (check the archives).

While I'm here, in case you missed it, William Bloody Swygart has just finished reviewing the entirety of this week's UK Top 40 singles chart elsewhere on the ILM Rolling UK Charts thread. Starts here.

Includes his take on a number of records discussed here. Good stuff.

Daniela & Sharona Pik are not only Israeli teenpop, but twin-pop!

xpost, yeah loved the WBS write-ups. I'm thinking about taking "Give It to Me" off my "2007 singles" list altogether after his review. I was wavering as it was.

(I think this is still them. But it probably counts as teenpop, right?)

From the sound I wouldn't call Keren Ann's music Jewish. Then again, from the sound I might call the Animals and the early Beatles and Joni Mitchell and the Stooges Jewish - my use of the word "Jewish" is as ad hoc as my use of the word "teenpop" (in fact teenpop has some Jewish parentage) - but if Keren is Jewish I guess that makes her music Jewish. Is my writing Jewish? Anyway, Keren Ann sounds like something I'd give last place to in my League Of Pop writeups, while finding some way to compliment it: "Manages to combine new age and twee, not an unnotable achievement. Drifts and dribbles nicely; in fact I don't mind listening to it. Except I probably won't ever again." In other words I enthusiastically endorse Jeff's boredom.

Is your writing Jewish? It's probably Talmudic. ;)

Really liking Rihanna's "Shut Up And Drive": sounds like Mutt Lange remixing one of Blondie's Moroder tracks. Um, not sure what I mean by that. Maybe just that it's dance-oriented rock, with catchy poppiness in the vocal harmonies. I'd say that Rihanna's involvement-detachment ambivalence sounds differently flavored from Blondie's involvement-detachment ambivalence. (And now what the hell do I mean by that?)

Hey Frank, did you post over at the Pop Open that you've got exciting news to share?

OMG

My exciting news keeps getting postponed.

Hurricane Chris's "A Bay Bay," which Kelefa mentioned in the Times a few days ago: Novelty hip-hop on an independent label, getting "rhythmic" and "urban" airplay, huge in Dallas, big in San Antonio, Memphis, Montgomery, Birmingham, Little Rock, southern Louisiana, Atlanta, and Indianapolis, might or might not go national. Calls out to the babes, enlists an actual baby to help. (Not teenpop, though teens and toddlers will like it. But Disney, not to mention youth-oriented pop that isn't hip-hop, has created very little in the way of interesting novelty tracks recently - snap and hyphy do it much better - so we might as well talk about novelties here.)

Er, actually Shreveport is in northern Louisiana. But the song's getting spins in Baton Rouge, too.

Speaking of pre-preteens, Kidz Bop 12 comes out in June. Normally, I wouldn't give a shit, but last year's take on "Crazy Frog" was brilliant.

The tracklist:
01 Girlfriend | Kidz Bop Kids
02 The Sweet Escape | Kidz Bop Kids
03 It's Not Over | Kidz Bop Kids
04 Say It Right | Kidz Bop Kids
05 Never Again | Kidz Bop Kids
06 What Goes Around...Comes Around | Kidz Bop Kids
07 Umbrella | Kidz Bop Kids
08 Cupid's Chokehold | Kidz Bop Kids
09 Glamorous | Kidz Bop Kids
10 If Everyone Cared | Kidz Bop Kids
11 Beautiful Liar | Kidz Bop Kids
12 How To Save A Life | Kidz Bop Kids
13 Makes Me Wonder | Kidz Bop Kids
14 Don't Matter | Kidz Bop Kids
15 Boston | Kidz Bop Kids
16 With Love | Kidz Bop Kids
17 Ice Box | Kidz Bop Kids
18 Home | Kidz Bop Kids

snap and hyphy do it much better - so we might as well talk about novelties here

Hyphy Hitz might be teenpop album of the year.

Top 10 Greatest Novelty Hip-Hop Albums Ever. Has ILX done this one yet? My nominations: 2LiveJews, BlackHattitude, Remedy, Socalled and Solomon, Y-Love and Matisyahu.

I'm inspired. Top 10 Greatest Jewish Novelty Hip-Hop Albums Ever. And yes, there are at least 10 of them.

Depends how you define "novelty" (and "Jewish," for that matter), but Beastie Boys and MC Paul Barman spring to mind. Those may be the only two I've heard albums by.

Re New Kelly Clarkson tracklist: So "Maybe" and "One Minute" and "Yeah" all made the cut for the album. "Anymore" didn't. I'm looking forward to hearing studio versions of all 3. Lots o' discussion on the Kelly Clarkson Express message board, of course, and they seem to support "One Minute", "Can I Have a Kiss" and "Haunted" for next single. Hmm, never heard "Can I Have a Kiss" or "Haunted", will try to track those down later. And nobody seems to care about poor ol' "Maybe" except teenpop thread denizens.

My daughter's junior high concert tonight featured the 6th and 7th grade choruses doing the following songs: "Breakaway," "My Boo," "We Go Together" (from Grease), a medley of "My Girl" and "My Guy," "Bless the Broken Road," "Rush," "A Whole New World," "Hurt" (Aguilera version), and "Live Like You Were Dying." It was awesome. That is all.

Uh, Idolator of all places just tipped me to the first <A href="http://idolator.com/ybtunes/mp3/leak-of-the-day-part-two-high-school-musical-2-is-out-for-the-summer-264614.php&quot;>HSM single</a>. Like the summer version of "We're All in This Together," basically. Coulda made a good S Club single, maybe? Why do they use such canned horns? Ah, now I'm remembering that I don't really care about 80% of the first HSM soundtrack, hmmmm.

Woops, new HSM single.

Jewish Novelty Hip-Hop Albums

Hip-Hop Hoodios. (Not great, but definitely Jewish, and novelty. With rock en espanol tossed in, too.)

And there was this one duo that Marc Weisblott (I think) reviewed for me at the Voice six or seven years ago -- they blew 2 Live Jews out of the water, but I'm forgetting their name, and google isn't helping. (Also, were Blood of Abraham a novelty?)

As for "Greatest Novelty Hip-Hop Albums Ever", I bet you could find all kinds of great ones that came out pre-1990 if you really looked--hell, at the beginning, lots of hip-hop was novelty music by definition. (And come to think of it, lots of it never stopped.) "Rapper's Delight" was totally a novelty hit, and so are "Lip Gloss" and "Party Like a Rock Star" and "Cupid Shuffle" and "Vans"! So no, Matisyahu and So-Called etc. don't come anywhere near close to that list; that's just silly. Though Wake Your Daughter Up by No Face might.

I assume Rodney Dangerfield would make the Jewish novelty hip-hop list as well:

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y216/swdavies35/RappinRodney.jpg

Also maybe Mel Brooks with "It's Good to Be The King" and "Hitler Rap" (though actually I'm not sure whether he or Rodney ever made full hip-hip albums per se'. I'm pretty sure Mel didn't, actually.)

Also Bob Dylan with "Subterranean Homesick Blues."

at the beginning, lots of hip-hop was novelty music by definition

as far as the (white) music industry was concerned anyway

Well, the concept of "novelty" is always relative, sure. (Things are only novel in relation to non-novelties, right?) But it's hard to think that, say, Frankie Smith didn't consider "Double Dutch Bus" (to name one obvious example) a novelty song in some way.

From Aly & AJ Myspace:

"We are getting into rehearsal mode for our upcoming tour and can't wait for you to hear our new songs LIVE! Our official track listing for Insomniatic is:

1. Potential Breakup Song
2. Bullseye
3. Closure
4. Division
5. Like It Or Leave It
6. Like Whoa
7. Insomniatic
8. Silence
9. If I Could Have You Back
10. Blush
11. Flattery
12. I'm Here
13. Chemicals React (Remix)

Just thought you'd want to know! We're stoked!

Love, Aly & AJ"

Is this Potential Breakup Song just a fluke moment of genius or is it a NEW DIRECTION?! I need another.

Crazy over-the-top cryptic Metal Mike Saunders email about crazy over-the-top bubbledance Europop songs; you'll have to cut and paste the youtube links (none of which I've actually looked at yet) yourownself:

-----
my Dutch pop-music pimp connection, 15 year punk rocker Sophia Zobel (who helped at the merch table w/several of their friends, the last gig day in Dusseldorf during its endless 10 crummy punk/ska/etc bands save ours at the end) dug around several record stores and scored the two key DUTCH POP / dancepop / girlpop / "Bubblegum Dance"
albums for us --
CHIPZ Greatest Hits and
DJUMBO JUMP the only Djumbo album so far
(both mandatory for any pop music fan, any age)
and the production values/songwriting on the poppiest songs is terrific. low-fidelity repros on YouTube below (for some of the songs). >>

to continue with e-mail (and the links/Youtube) to my pop music cohort, girlfriend Paige


paige --

this is the song from Krautland you are mentioning?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usSlUG3jvBM
by Junia, #1 german hit back in year 2000. yes, long preceding idiot Avril's song of the same title.

the mikey-clone intern on the trip brought back shitloads of stuff as i mentioned. once i unpack it all, who knows what's in there. there is definitely stufffffff for you spanning all eras 1969 - 2007 so we'll see when we see it fall out of the box(es). your "little box of stuff from europe" will be all sorted and put together by the end of this weekend for sureski. it's a nice tidy box because there are no 12" things, just 7" and CD-size! (Middle of the Road lp dupes will go into my master MOTR case, which gets dupes for you pulled out a little later this weekend or next week when i pull your late-birthday 12" album sets by LUV and Middle of The Road to go with the american band w/girl-singer that you apparently wanted a set (of my dupes) of.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye8MY2YcL9w
Djumbo on stage
you were aware of this 47 second excerpt/live clip? now they have to be one of your favorite Top 10 girlpop singing groups, huh!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE0w_UfpNmc
Djumbo Jump video. is this lyric related to the Dutch "jumping dance" you mentioned?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtIm2umbOKc
the Eyahe single, great song on the album in full stereo volume

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQCaOEKUtCc
supermarket in-store
good lord the dancing is so godawful it's almost cute. skinny white chicken arms flailing -- euros living up to their "worst dancers in the world" rep, yep.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcTTyci3Pa0
Undercover but not the orig video, a pastiche live-candid thing.
this was their most recent single, and didn't place nearly as high (Dutch pop charts) as the earlier hits. #13 i believe it said in Wikipedia.
this was the vid clip i terrified Manu, Daniel, and Astrid with for 90 seconds in Wiesbaden at D&M's apartment on the PC, before A. went back to her mobile-motel known a car backseat w/giant dog on the floorboard, and D&M smoked more hash in private. annnd right, i regrouped with the four Swedes led by Markus who all crashed in my two-small-single-beds hotel room (after we finally got a cab large enough to house 5 bodies). and they got tons of free downstairs breakfast food too < 10:30am when it shut down the serving bins. and that and free A*Teens CDs too, wow. that was one productive 12 hour shift from 5pm to 5am.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAB0PdSZ2FY
TOTP of single Boya Boya Bay (they have far fewer novelty singles than Chipz, ie this one only which is forgettable). man. i have no constructive criticism for this clip. it's a wonder they haven't poked each others' eyes out with all the arm-waving, aka "dance steps." ahem, uh, uh, uh don't you have to move your feet occasionally for it to be "dancing"? just wondering. the curly hair ringlet girl is the gemini. the other two are the smiley Scorpios (prob have some Libra planets in the personal planets, ie mercury or venus which can only place one ahead/behind/same as the sun sign) and nope, sorry, i have no interest in ever again in this lifetime seeing any dutch girl nekkid. one GF of that nationality was enough. and they were a early era jockette who did NOT have no skinny chicken-arms.

gwen is going to love the DJUMBO and CHIPZ albums so much i should save her (eventual) copies for christmas so that her mom is job-situated and settled down in that respect, when G drives her mom nuts with them. fortunately, the kids' personal boomboxes/players in their rooms don't crank a lot of volume.
----------------------------------

CHIPZ section yeahhh baby yeah
the CD album/greatest hits has awesome loud mixes and really slamming rhythm tracks/drum machines, it shows massive Max Martin / swedish pop influence jacked into the kid-pop girlpop sphere. see Chipz' Wikipedia page. "radio stations would not play their tunes because they were considered too childish, so they instead found exposure on "Fox Kids" aka the Fox Family Network in holland it sounds like. don't know if they have Disney Channel in that country.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gErEAyoR97Q
One Day When I Grow Up video, sublimely retarded. this is my favorite song ever, or at least of the month.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDXUvnsJhZY
dutch TOTP spot for same. dude this is awesome pop music at its goofiest, just sublime.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UabqZJhoZm8&mode=related&search=
store promo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5Hmw0gB1RA&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hFBXyqLnUE&mode=related&search=
TV clips of One Two Three
wow, these guys can dance! they must be gay or why would they be in a girlpop band? but then, there's the A*Teens guys (friends w/the girls since grade school) who were totally hetero. huh.
and the flip-the-guy dance move, rad shit man. this totally ranks on groups like Backsteet, Steps, etc, who couldn't dance at all. Djumbo are in another league of can't/couldn't/never will so they're exempt from being rated against the actual professionals. Djumbo's clothes also have a taint of "got it at the thrift store" i think. hand me downs from previous girlpop acts i bet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYEK4vdPSs8
Rock Star here's your song, TV clip

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kd2EPaLGnH0&mode=related&search=
CHIPZ hitmix which i'm not clear about w/o seeing the discography

annd BANAROO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcKObYcPXx4&mode=related&search=
Dubi Dam Dam
which is still a big item on my german want list

sophia and someone else thought we would like belgium singing girlpop group "K3," but their songs are nowhere as melodic as Djumbo and Chipz. (there's many on Youtube). didn't make any impession at all. Djumbo's writer/producer/allinstruments 2-man team are REALLY good songwriters. they never overdo a chorus with unecessary repeats.

Wow, I was wrong! The links work!

Well "I know, right?", the short answer is that I have no idea. But looking over that tracklist, I see a lot of probable break-up songs, which if nothing else is a stark break lyrically from album one. (And one I'm not too happy about, though "Potential Break Up Song" has really great lyrics). My guess is the album will have a lot more "Potential Break Up Song"s than "Rush"s

I don't think they'll go in a "Break-Up" direction simply because it's not the kind of music they usually write. I imagine that they're basically singer/songwriters (guitar and piano-based) with a rock edge coming (primarily) from a more hard rock sound in Christian rock. This is basically speculation, but I imagine there are major secular <i>and</i> Christian rock influences in terms of how they write their songs (not to mention their parents, also Xtian folk/rock types if I remember correctly). So I'd bet that they view electro as something of a diversion. They aren't particularly eclectic anyway (so far), and their best songs are actually kind of hard and oppressive ("Rush," "I Am One of Them," "Not This Year"). If they have "serious things to say" (and I think they do), they'll probably use guitar-based rock to do it, with maybe the occasional foray into a piano ballad. But I could be wrong.

(Then again, titles like "Bullseye" and "Like Whoa" suggest they're lightening up a little. But "Division" and "Closure" could be heavy...hm, no idea, really.)

Hey, Jessica P to thread...what's yer take on DJUMBO? Haven't listened yet myself but I never really got into Chipz aside from like two songs. (Are there any big Eurobubbledance types that they've missed over on this site?)

I'm curious to see the Jukebox take on "Potential Breakup Song." I just sent in a review that said that I like "Rush" better, but that "Breakup" is still pretty fun.